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Inequalities and Social Europe | 65
area that is most closely connected to economic welfare and well-being (even
though all the others are also undoubtedly related but to differing extents and
degrees). The employment policy, introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty in
1997 as a substitute for the Maastricht Treaty Protocol on Social Policy, gave
the Union the responsibility to support the Member States in reaching their
employment goals, as well as acting as the guardians of certain social and
employment rights, for example regarding working conditions and safety,
gender equality, or social bargaining.
The 2010s led to the deepest crisis in the history of the EU. The enlargement
of 2004 increased the levels of inequalities between the Member States and
posed a serious challenge to the entire community and especially its cohesion
policy - as was expected. What was not expected, however, was the financial
crisis that began in 2007/2008, which shook the entire Union, exposing it
to a dual pressure: a pressure on societies, on the one hand, with increasing
unemployment and decreasing incomes, and, on the other, on the euro,
which had to be protected to avoid a further escalation ofthe crisis. The strict
austerity measures, which were mainly the results of the efforts to stave off a
currency crisis, intensified the social pressure on governments and societies,
especially in the southern part of the EU.
This also resulted in increasing mistrust and scepticism about the Union
in the populations of the Member States (European Parliament 2016). Over
time, an increasing number of actors began to call for actions to advance
social eguity, from international economic organisations like the IMF or the
OECD, all the way to the Council of Europe and the European Parliament.
In the surrounding debate, the desire for a more active European policy,
going beyond the mere expression of goodwill and principles and offering
concrete and targeted instruments to address the underlying problems,
moved to the fore.
This gave rise to a social investment package announced by the European
Commission in 2013 to mitigate the social impact of the crisis, which was
followed by the enactment of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) in
2017. The EPSR consists of a list of non-binding rights and principles, aiming
to “support fair and well-functioning labour markets and welfare systems’,
tackling evolving social challenges and changes in view of the newly emerging
types of employment stemming from the digital revolution and the rise of
new technologies. The objective of the EPSR is to foster “a renewed process
of convergence towards better working and living conditions across Europe”
(Altafin and Lamer 2018), although the realisation of these is optional and
remain in the competence of the Member States.
Some in the European political as well as academic arena welcomed and
acknowledged the EPSR as the sign of the EU putting the social cohesion back
into the center of the integration process, and they also saw it as an appropriate
instrument to this end. As Marianne Thyssen, a Flemish christian democrat
politician and the Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights at the time put it: